washington

Eight senators have introduced a revised proposal to double US investment in research and development during the next 12 years and introduce strict guidelines for evaluating research programmes and eliminating inefficient ones.

The proposed law, S2217, replaces a previous proposal, S1305, which would have doubled research spending in ten years, but was supported by only 19 of the 100 senators.

To attract broader support, the bill sets less ambitious funding targets and incorporates new policy principles and evaluation requirements (see Nature 393, 504; 1998).

It also sets one aggregated target for all non-defence funding agencies, allowing money to be redistributed between science agencies. S1305 was criticized for specifying equal increases for all agencies, regardless of their mission or performance.

The bill, introduced on 25 June by Senator Bill Frist (Republican, Tennessee), is supported by a range of engineering and scientific societies and the universities. But it has not won the active support of the biomedical research community, which is pursuing its own plans to double funding for the National Institutes of Health in just five years.

David Moore, a lobbyist at the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), is uncertain whether the AAMC would even discuss endorsing the bill. “I think we'll continue pursuing the doubling of the biomedical research budget in five years,” he says.

But Frist said he thought the bill would attract more sponsors than the previous proposal, and would be approved by the Senate. As an ‘authorization bill’, the measure sets non-binding targets for future spending.

Phil Gramm (Republican, Texas), who sponsored the previous proposal, said the new bill would now stand a better chance of progressing because Frist would carry it through the subcommittee that he chairs — the science, technology and space subcommittee of the Senate commerce committee.

Scientific societies hope that a companion bill will be proposed in the House of Representatives soon after Vernon Ehlers (Republican, Michigan) completes his review of science policy later this month. They hope that the leadership of the House, including Newt Gingrich (Republican, Georgia), who has recently made several speeches in support of increased research funding, will support such a bill.

Allan Bromley, former president of the American Physical Society and presidential science adviser, thinks the new bill will be passed by the Senate this year. Frist says its prospects depend on how many sponsors it attracts in the next two weeks.